Mortal Fear

We stood together in the dripping trees, looking at the floodlit face of the mansion. Solid stonework, like an outbuilding of Versailles. Kali’s hand dropped to my distended zipper. She lightly squeezed me, a nurse checking a pulse.

I shivered. “We must wait.”

A short intake of breath. “How long?”

I crouched in the tenebrous foliage, booted up the computer, and logged back onto EROS. “She’s still at her computer. She’s searching for me.”

“Then let her find you.”

I shut off the computer and put it back into the case. “The rightmost upper window,” I said, recalling the photocopied blueprints that the archives so dutifully sent me. “Now.”

Crossing the open ground between fence and mansion was daunting for me. For Kali nothing. She believes we are invisible in such moments. Less than shadows. We are our intent.

I opened my briefcase beneath the side balcony. Kali took out the rope and hurled the rubberized hook over the ironwork of the balcony rail. She climbs like a thief.

I tossed up the briefcase.

A rape kit, police would call it.

But it is so much more.

I came prepared for resistance, but the French doors on the balcony were open. So often it happens that way. Evil is an invited guest.

Kali pulled the rope up after us.

We moved up the hallway together. Thick carpeting. Conditioned air whispering out of the ceiling. Somewhere the regular groan of a ceiling fan slowly turning.

I followed the groan.

It led us to the master bedroom. Kali took up her post beside the door. I see it again and again, fate unraveling into chaos:

I open the door as softly as possible.

The patient is seated before her computer, her back to me. She wears a long, flowing garment, like something from one of her early novels. You should tape a penny to one of the blades to stop that noise, I want to say. But I don’t. Instead I say:

“I have come, Karin.”

The chair tips onto the carpet as she bounds out of it in voiceless terror. Her eyes mostly white behind her glasses. She is heavier than her publicity pictures. The eyes dart to my exposed hand, searching for a knife or a gun. But it is empty.

“How did you get in?” she whispers.

I do not dignify this.

“Wh–who are you?”

“Prometheus.”

Her eyes widen beyond the point I believe possible. “But I was just—” She looks back at her computer. “How …?”

“It is not important. I have come for you at last. To give you what you most desire.”

She stares, her brain obviously thrumming behind the glassy eyes. “How—Do you have a car for us?” she asks finally.

“I thought you might call for one of yours.”

“Yes,” she says much too quickly. “If you’ll just let me get some things—”

“No.”

She freezes near her bedside table. Her eyes dart downward, then back to my face. It is breaking down. Kali was right: fantasy and reality are alternate universes. I come to save, but who can grasp great purpose with vision clouded by terror? My hopes crash around me like shattered icons. I slip my right hand behind my back and grip the butt of the pistol.

“Karin?” I plead, offering one last chance.

Then her mask cracks, revealing her panic as she stabs a hand at the bedside table. I see a button there. An alarm.

I have no choice but to fire.

The feathers of the dart bloom in the midline, just above where her navel must be. The patient looks down with animal incomprehension and pulls out the dart, but it is much too late for that. Then she runs. The brave ones usually do.

She runs right at me. Not actually at me, but toward me, because I stand between her and the door.

I let her run past me.

She gasps.

I turn.

Kali stands in the doorway. Faithful Kali. Saffron sari, nut-brown skin, jet hair, blacker eyes. She holds a dagger, wickedly curved. A fearsome instrument. Simple. Effective in two dimensions, the physical and the psychological.

The patient turns to me for some explanation. How powerfully her heart must be beating

“Kali,” I say, regretting every moment.

The patient starts at the sound of Kali closing the door, watches the young woman move lithely across the floor with my briefcase, like a dark angel.

Kali sets the case on the floor, then stands and unfastens her sari. It falls to the carpet, leaving her utterly naked. I watch the patient trying to work out what is happening as the Ketamine cocktail courses through her system. Why is the Indian woman undressing? Just before she loses consciousness, she might work it out. That Kali is undressing to keep her clothes free of blood.

I must disrobe as well, but first I walk to the computer, log off, type a few commands, and shut off the machine. Then I return to the patient, kneel, and open my briefcase.

“What’s in there?” she asks dully, sitting down on the floor.

“My instruments.” I lift a stainless steel rongeur from the case and try to smile, but my heart is a black hole.

The patient has done enough research for her novels to recognize the rongeur. In blind panic she breaks once more for the door, scrambling on all fours like an infant, but Kali channels her flat onto her stomach. I watch silently until I see the dagger flash and press against the patient’s throat.

“Don’t dare,” I say, alarmed by the blood lust in her eyes. Command rises into my throat. “Strip her.”

We took our time with the patient. We could afford to, as Karin allowed no guards inside the mansion. But our options were limited. How I longed to spend myself within that still body. But of course it was impossible.